FRC Promotes Abusive "Change Therapy" in Wake of Gay Suicides

The so-called Family Research Council has done it again. They have yet again proven the only families they truly care for are the ones that conform to their narrow parameters. They have yet again shown that they're not interested in any legitimate research. They have yet again shored up their house of cards on the lives of young gay teens.

This time, the lie being peddled is that gays can change, if only they want to. They peddle the dangerous and false hope of groups like Exodus International, who claim that they have succeeded where licensed professionals have not. These groups promote bad science and endanger lives through selling their program as a so-called cure for something that is as inherent as handedness.

What's worse, FRC has taken the long-documented history of high rates of depression and suicide among gays and twisted it to serve their agenda. While it is true that marginalized communities are more at risk for mental health issues, what FRC doesn't tell you is that so-called reparative therapy is most emphatically not a cure.

Those who survive the therapy (and I do mean survive) face higher suicide rates than gays who have not undergone "reparative" therapy. Degenerative therapy is a more accurate term for the work that Exodus does. Convincing a person that God will not love them unless they do serious damage to themselves is neither healthy nor moral. Brutalizing souls in the name of God, and then using the suicides of teens to justify that brutalization, is not a business that true Christians ought to engage in.

The Family Research Council is peddling judgement and destruction, poorly clothed as concern, and they're doing it on the backs of victims like Asher, Raymond, Tyler, Billy, Seth, and countless others. Except Tony Perkins, like Pontius Pilate himself, cannot easily wash the blood off of his hands. As he and his crew of FRC Pharisees watch the grim toll rise, I cannot help but hope that some of them at least find the opportunity to recant and work to undo so much of the destruction they have wrought.